In the press briefing by the White House COVID-19 response team, the following was shared on Indian COVID-19 situation:
“I want to turn to the global situation and briefly address the recent COVID-19 surge in India. First of all, we stand with the country of India during this very trying and tragic surge.
Over the weekend, we shared that we are working to deploy resources and supplies, including therapeutics, rapid testing kits, ventilators, PPE, and raw materials that are needed to manufacture vaccines in India. And CDC, which has a long history of working with and in India on public health measures, will be deploying a Strike Team to the country to support the public health efforts there. We are committed to helping India through this difficult time.
In addition, yesterday, we announced that given the strong portfolio of approved, highly effective, and safe vaccines here in United States, we are looking at the options to share AstraZeneca vaccines with other countries as they become available. This should amount to around 60 million doses or so over the next two months.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is highly safe and effective, and approved in many parts of the world. And since it is not approved for use in the U.S., we do not need to use the AstraZeneca vaccine here during the next few months. We have sufficient supply of vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to accommodate our needs in the U.S.
Now, this is something where we’re still gaining data on a daily basis, but the most preli- — the most recent data was looking at convalescent sera of COVID-19 cases in people who received the vaccine used in India — the Covaxin — and it was found to neutralize the 617 variant.
So despite the real difficulty that we’re seeing in India, vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this.”
